Introduction

Notes Introduction 1. Thanks to the invention of Youtube.com, this commercial can be accessed via the Internet at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4paUNGshJQ or using the search term “2003 American Express Jamal Mashburn.” 2. The varied spelling here is significant. The term Voudon or Vodún is used to recognize the most untainted religious practices that are indigenous to West Africa. Vodou, then, is a specific reference to the syncretized practices of Haiti. Voodoo refers the Americanized practice of African- based spirituality, most often associated with Louisiana. 3. In Equiano’s narrative, he makes reference to a conjure woman figure beckon- ing to him in his dream. Within days, he goes to see the very same “fortune teller,” to use his term for her (111). 4. I construct this term from Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography, as discussed in Tate’s Black Women Writers at Work (115). 5. Farah Jasmine Griffin creates the Ancestor/stranger paradigm in her study of the African American migration narrative, Who Set you Flowin’?:The African American Migration Narrative. Griffin builds her idea from Morrison’s discussion of the Ancestor in the essay “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation.” 6. Elizabeth McHenry discusses the rise of the New Negro and literary societies and how both affected black folk culture. See especially chapters 1 and 2. 7. I borrow the concept of “literary archaeologies” from Toni Morrison’s 1987 essay “The Site of Memory.” Feng articulates her idea of rituals of rememory, in which she also builds on one of Morrison’s concepts. I address how these ideas work in conjunction with my scholarship in the final subheading of Chapter 1. See Feng for a more detailed description of her concept. 8. See Montgomery’s chapter “Ifá Paradigm” in her The Spirit and the Word for a complete description and application of the Ifá Paradigm as a literary theory for Africana literature. 9. Turner makes a clear distinction between his messianic visions and the trivial- ness he associates with conjure (Greenburg 46), and Equiano gives a very short narrative about his own skepticism toward the supernatural via African traditions until experience teaches him otherwise (111). 10. I am referring to Tucker’s article “Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day,” from which I borrow my language. 11. In his introduction to Chesnutt’s tales, Richard Brodhead discusses how conjure worked against the total domination of enslaved Africans by proving that 166 Notes there was a limitation to the power of the master. He argues that Chesnutt’s stories exemplify such limitations and that this, perhaps, was one of the inten- tional themes of Chesnutt’s collection. 12. Theophus Smith argues in the introduction to Conjuring Culture that conjure should not be conceptualized in the limiting view of binary oppositions such as good and evil. Rather, conjure has the capacity to both heal and harm. This is not seen as a contradiction, as an African cosmology does not recognize such concepts of good and evil in the same way as Christian doctrine dictates. 13. Loa is a term used to describe the spiritual entities or deities practitioners of Vodou communicate with, give offerings to, and serve in the practice of their religion. Chapter 1 1. This definition is taken from the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition (934). The Oxford English Dictionary online (2009) was also referenced in determining the history, definitions, and etymology of the word “witch.” 2. Deren 75, 156– 58. 3. Inquisitors of the Catholic Church Bernard Gui, Jacques de Morerio, and Nich- olas Eymeric were granted the power to define and act against heretical acts involving occult arts. Gui and Eymeric each wrote highly influential handbooks on their experience that shaped how medieval Europe defined witchcraft. See Bailey, “From Sorcery to Witchcraft” 967– 77. 4. These include astronomy, alchemy, spiritual and demonic magic, and necromancy. 5. Bailey discusses the differences between witchcraft and the learned occult arts, to which the Catholic Church turned a blind eye. See “From Sorcery to Witch- craft” 964. 6. See 183– 246 in Mules and Men for Hurston’s discussion of her hoodoo training. 7. Bailey suggests that Formicarius was reprinted until 1692; ironically, this is the year the Salem Village witch craze began. See “From Sorcery to Witchcraft” 977. 8. See Bailey, “From Sorcery to Witchcraft” 987. He also notes that the males who were executed for witchcraft had some association with a female who was believed to be a witch, usually a wife, mother, or other family member. 9. Carolyn Morrow Long discusses the changes to and modifications of European paganism and folk religion after the Protestant Reformation declared sacramen- tal objects unholy. See Spiritual Merchants 11. 10. See Raboteau’s discussion of the exception to this commonly accepted idea (27– 31). 11. Giles Corey was the only male to be accused, tried, and executed for being a witch during the Salem witch trials (Breslaw, Reluctant 183). 12. Here I am referencing the “Curse of Ham,” or Hamitic myth, which has his- torically been used to justify the enslavement of people of African descent based on a particular interpretation of biblical scripture (Genesis 9:18–27). For a full discussion of the myth and its racist implications, see Mbiafu and Mitsch 9– 33. Notes 167 Also see excerpts from Benjamin Moseley’s A Treatise on Sugar (1799; 159– 68); House of Commons Sessions Papers (1789; 168– 80); and Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica (1834; 181– 93) in Srinivas Aravamudan’s critical edition of William Earle’s Obi, or The History of Three- Fingered Jack (2005). 13. See Long (Spiritual Merchants, ch. 1) for a considerable comparison of African- based and European folk religion and the commonalities between them. 14. Code Noire, or the Black Codes were a body of legislation which dictated how enslaved Africans would be treated under the law of Caribbean colonies. These laws were not intended to protect slaves, but rather to provide organization and structure to slave colonies. See Long’s Spiritual Merchants, 18 and Barbara Bush’s Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 26– 66. 15. Barbara Bush provides a lengthy discussion of women using African-based practices of healing and harming to influence slave insurrection (74– 77). 16. See Sharpe’s chapter “The Rebels Old Obeah Woman” and Karla Gottlieb’s monograph. 17. Marronage refers to the act of running away from one’s slave master, usually to a Maroon colony hidden in the deepest part of the island or in the mountains. The term is most often used in reference to slavery in the Caribbean. 18. Mambo is a term in the Haitian Vodou religion for a female priestess. Maya Deren poetically retells the mythic history of the Haitian Revolution and specifically points to a mambo who appears before the insurgents to initiate a ritual sacrifice for protection and courage (see Deren 62 and subsequent notes). 19. Obeah practices were outlawed in Jamaica in 1792. 20. See Bush 78. 21. Rememory is the term Toni Morrison coins in the novel Beloved to signify the process of recalling an experience from a traumatic past or the ability to share the memory of unspeakable acts across generations as a type of cultural memory. 22. Trudier Harris discusses “folklore in literature” as a creative process in which African American authors (Morrison specifically) produce original folk char- acters, sayings, stories, and other lore that are completely fictional while often signifying on older, well-established folk traditions (see Harris, Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison, introduction). 23. See Ashford. 24. See Chesnutt “Superstitions.” 25. Lorde discusses her notion of biomythography in Tate (115). She describes it as fiction that is built from biography, dreams, history, and myth. 26. Breslaw, Reluctant 85– 87. 27. Ibid. 175. 28. Rosenthal references Erikson (141) and Boyer and Nissenbaum (181). (Rosen- thal, “Dark Eve” 77– 79). 29. Rosenthal, “Dark Eve” 77– 79. 30. This line is taken from Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask.” 168 Notes 31. There are several sources that document Tituba’s deposition. See Breslaw, “Confession” 542– 49 and Reluctant 127–32; V. Tucker, “Purloined Identity” 627; and “Salem Witch Trial Papers.” 32. Tituba is referred to as such within the judicial records of the Salem witch trials. See “Salem Witch Trial Papers.” 33. See Breslaw, Reluctant 21. 34. For a discussion of water- gazing, see White 90. 35. Joseph Bin- bin Mauvant is the African-born ancestor of Alourdes “Mama Lola” Kolwaski— the central figure in Karen McCarthy Brown’s ethnographic study Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. 36. Here I purposely change the spelling from Vodou, which signifies the Haitian religion, to Voodoo—an Americanized spelling that specifically refers to the practice as it was retained in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana. 37. Ward 23; Long, New Orleans 22– 23; Fandrich, “Mysterious” 152– 53 all document the speculation about Charles Laveaux’s racial identity as a French planter but point to evidence in the historical records that suggests that he was indeed a free person of color. 38. There is speculation that Paris deserted Laveau, died of the yellow fever epi- demic, or possibly returned to his home, Saint Domingue. None of this has been corroborated in the historical record. See Ward 38; Long, New Orleans 49– 50; Fandrich, “Mysterious” 155– 56. 39. See Fandrich, “Mysterious” 166; Long, New Orleans 151– 64. 40. The execution of Jean Adam and Anthony Delille in the summer of 1852 for robbery and the murder of a slave woman is the incident in question.

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